This extremely hard line product is the brain child of French philosopher Michel Onfray who holds that the works of Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris is too soft and that religion should be wiped out completely. He is best known as a hedonist, anarchist, and pragmatist who can even be quite derisive of science. It is his contention that utilitarian ethics pushed by philosophy, minus any religious input is the only way to go.

It is my view that this approach is far too radical and that religion will always serve some valuable purposes generated from its more positive side..............."When the gods are toppled, new ones will be invented" Camille Paglia -is a relevant quote here I believe, as Onfray(proposes) " a profane spirituality" stating " if theology is abolished philosophy still remains." There are many I feel who would prefer 'the devil they know' than the hedonistic ramblings of French god/philosophers.

Should religion be completely destroyed by adopting a rigid and militant atheism or can the two constructively co-exist?

(24-05-2012 06:10 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: This extremely hard line product is the brain child of French philosopher Michel Onfray who holds that the works of Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris is too soft and that religion should be wiped out completely. He is best known as a hedonist, anarchist, and pragmatist who can even be quite derisive of science. It is his contention that utilitarian ethics pushed by philosophy, minus any religious input is the only way to go.

(24-05-2012 06:10 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: This extremely hard line product is the brain child of French philosopher Michel Onfray who holds that the works of Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris is too soft and that religion should be wiped out completely. He is best known as a hedonist, anarchist, and pragmatist who can even be quite derisive of science. It is his contention that utilitarian ethics pushed by philosophy, minus any religious input is the only way to go.

The only way to go where?

I think he see personal unfettered pleasures for self and others via utilitarianism creating a present day utopia.

As for groups not fitting his rationales........its anyone's guess as to where.

(24-05-2012 06:18 PM)Dom Wrote: Education is good, outlawing religion is bad IMO. All that will happen is that religions will go underground and feel persecuted and start crusades as soon as possible.

A very good example of this is the Uighur minority living in Xinjiang province, China. Xinjiang officially became a province of the Chinese empire in the mid-19th century. The area was full of various Islamic minority groups that didn't take kindly to being under Chinese rule. They actually took control of the province a couple of times in the 1940s, but the Communists took it back in the 50s. The normal policy of Communist Russia was to give total control to areas with large minority populations (hence the existence of the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, etc.). The Uighur knew this and asked the Communists to make Xinjiang the "Islamic Republic of Uighurstan." However, the Chinese didn't want to give up that much control, so they granted it autonomous status in 1955. That pretty much meant that it had a little bit more freedom than the other provinces. Anyway, the Chinese government has cracked down on Islam in the area because they think it fosters separatist notions. But what they don’t realize is that the crackdowns force the Muslims to meet secretly, where Imams preach about the utopia that would be the Islamic Republic of Uighurstan. If they gave them more religious freedom, the Uighurs would be more willing to accept a Chinese identity since national and cultural identities are separate concepts.

Religious repression was actually one of the contributing factors of the Urumqi riots that took place in the capital city of Xinjiang in the summer of 2009. Another factor was economic hardship. The tipping point was when two Uighur migrant workers where killed by Chinese in Southern China over a false rumor about the rape of a Chinese woman. Uighurs in Urumqi formed a demonstration to call the Chinese government to bring the perpetrators to justice. They eventually began to clash with police, leading to a riot in which nearly 200 people died, mostly Chinese. I imagine this would become a commonplace event in countries all around the world if religion was outright banned.

I'll keep it short in the beginning, so you won't have to read the whole thing, if you don't want to, and still get and answer to the question.

I don't think religion and science can co-exists forever. The more we learn about the universe, the less religion, and the believe in a deity, will be able to fit in. Inevitably, I believe that atheism and science will be inseparable; you'll have to put you chips in faith or reason. You'll have to believe what is reasonable i.e. science or deny science and put faith in theism.

You can view the Four Horsemen video, if you want a response on whether or not a world without faith is possible or would be something I'd hope for: my answer is similar to Christopher Hitchens.

(24-05-2012 06:10 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: This extremely hard line product is the brain child of French philosopher Michel Onfray who holds that the works of Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris is too soft and that religion should be wiped out completely. He is best known as a hedonist, anarchist, and pragmatist who can even be quite derisive of science. It is his contention that utilitarian ethics pushed by philosophy, minus any religious input is the only way to go.

It is my view that this approach is far too radical and that religion will always serve some valuable purposes generated from its more positive side..............."When the gods are toppled, new ones will be invented" Camille Paglia -is a relevant quote here I believe, as Onfray(proposes) " a profane spirituality" stating " if theology is abolished philosophy still remains." There are many I feel who would prefer 'the devil they know' than the hedonistic ramblings of French god/philosophers.

Should religion be completely destroyed by adopting a rigid and militant atheism or can the two constructively co-exist?

Militant atheism is the wrong way to go if that means in an aggressive, forceful manner, but active and compassionate atheism is definitely the way to go. It has to be tough but tough love, active but not forceful. I'm an atheist and want others to be atheists because I care about humanity.

I agree with education being important. To me, the end is the means. Those who are properly educated, in general, will accept atheism more easily and willingly. I see it in people all of the time: it's a basic lack of understanding of philosophy and science along with fear and indoctrination that lead to people to become theist (remember atheism is the default position).

We have to stay active and challenge theism out of moral duty; these are not just people telling our children that they ought to believe something based solely on faith (that's bad enough), they are also incorporating harmful ideology and untruths in with it. I wouldn't say that Dawkins and Harris are so soft that it should lead to a type of atheism that the guy you are referring to seems to be implying; I do, however, think Christopher Hitchens was where we need to be, and we should just follow in his footsteps.

There is a saying or quote that goes, "show 'em the truth, can't make em believe it". That's all we have to do: show people the truth. We show them philosophy, reason and logic and explain how it works, then we show them the universe, physics and mathematics and explain how it works. At that point, it makes the choice less of one: based on that knowledge, you either choose what is based on reason, or you chose what is completely unreasonable.

Two points to close things out:

1) You can't forget why theism exists in the first place.

It exists because of lack of understanding, wisdom, and knowledge of self, the universe, and that relationship.

2) You can't forget why theism is winning against atheism either.

They hijacked what was rightfully the property of intellect i.e. philosophy and held power over the public conversation on philosophical matters with their ideology. How/Why, were they able to maintain power over the conversation? They managed to tap into the most powerful human emotion: fear.

Fear of force e.g. believe in god or we will kill you, torture you, or ostracize you, and fear of the unknown.

Fear of the unknown is the biggest, in today's society especially. Atheist have problem there for two reasons:

1) Philosophically, the existence of reality is unknown, so physics can't be used in philosophy i.e. metaphysics exists so God can exist but science can't (since science is based on the observation of reality; if reality can't be shown to exist independent of the mind, science and physics can't be substantiated and used in logical philosophical argument. No matter how far we can extend our knowledge, agnosticism will always be a philosophical necessity.

2) Theism invokes a reward/punishment system based off that agnosticism. Atheism only has a reward/punishment of wisdom i.e. correct or incorrect belief equals wise or unwise. Theistic religion incorporates ties to that wisdom: if you are found wise e.g. you believe/have faith in god and god exists, you get heaven; if you, however, are found unwise i.e. you don't believe and god exists, you go to hell.

Especially given that publicly being an atheist should no longer bring about the first fear I talked about, that is even more reason to be openly atheist, and if you wish, actively anti-theist.

We then only need to address what is unknown, and given that most people don't readily subscribe to idealism or solipsism, we should be fine making practical arguments from empiricism and reason. We don't even have to deny metaphysics or ignore philosophy, we can just do what I do: separate metaphysics and physics (philosophy and science).

As for reward/punishment, that is where the big advantage is for theism that we, as atheists, can't do much to combat. Therein is where the biggest problem is located.

The Paradox Of Fools And Wise Men:
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts.” ― Bertrand Russell

(24-05-2012 06:18 PM)Dom Wrote: Education is good, outlawing religion is bad IMO. All that will happen is that religions will go underground and feel persecuted and start crusades as soon as possible.

OTOH, in my country the Communist control and persecution of religion gave different results. People are glad they can gather, pray and run the churches without any policemen showing up. They're not so ambitious to influence the politics. They hardly seem to have an opinion at all.

But in America the situation may be different, I heard the thing that truly broke the power of Churches was WW1+2. My grandma lived through a few years of WW2 and it affected her more than 40 years of Communism. (which wasn't half bad for workers) Her belief in God is just a source of comfort only and though she believes in the YEC teaching and so on, (and has some funny ideas of stone formation after decades of gardening) she never mentions it. Her motto is, "God lets stuff happen, but won't abandon you." Which is a relatively liberal idea, I think.

The point is, a temporary hardship may help the religious people to discover a true value of religion, which is to bring people together and to see that in real life the theologic dogmatic crap doesn't matter. When better times return, people will... look on the bright side of life. I'm pretty sure there's some psychologic principle behind it.

I think it is completely ridiculous to attempt to quell every religious
ideology. I definitely agree that Onfray's approach is far too radical.
It doesn't matter how hard he tries to eradicate religion, it will
always prevail over the generations.

Also, I do not think that the two can constructively co-exist
per-se. I guess that it depends on the rigidity of the militant atheist.
Sure, the two groups can exist. But I don't think it would be a
constructive existence.

(24-05-2012 06:10 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: Should religion be completely destroyed by adopting a rigid and militant atheism or can the two constructively co-exist?